


ever so slightly

by KingLear



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Happy 413, Happy Striders make me Happy, Moirails, POC Striders, Short Drabble, slight angst but mostly fluffy, small extract of after the game ends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-18 12:08:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10616610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingLear/pseuds/KingLear
Summary: Dirk learns how to forgive himself.





	

**Author's Note:**

> or dirk protection squad as i like to call it.  
> sorry its belated lmaoooooooooo  
> i like karkat but i can't characterize him at all, by god he's such a kookie character to write.

Your name is Dirk Strider and you are currently twenty years of age.

It has been over three years since the hellish game that allowed you to destroy the universe that you lived in and create another in its place, has ended. You mostly spend your days helping Dave and Karkat in their Can Town, and do odd jobs with Jake, helping the citizens of the Consort kingdom with their daily troubles and feats. You've even made new friends with the trolls! Or, well, part troll.

You spend time together with Arquiusprite doing random shit with the technology from this planet, and the part of his personality that is lil Hal doesn't even resent you half as much as he used to. Maybe what they say about meeting the right person is all it takes for the blossoming of a brighter personality; who knows.

You're still working on making friends with the rest of them but you've all got plenty of time (Ergo: Eternity) and you're really in no rush at all.

You and Jake... Are not a thing. And that's really okay. It doesn't kill as much as it used to. You were okay with it from the start to be quite truthful, initially because even looking at him hurt too much, reminded you too much of the times that you'd hurt him and were a toxic piece of shit to yourself, but now it's just that your feelings are not on the same page anymore; you see him and you are not reminded of the undying feelings you had for him. Perhaps it is as you spoke with Jane after you woke up on your questbeds after your trials with the trickster candy, he was the option because of his undeniable accessibility as the only other male that both of you could interact with. Though, it hurts to think like that. 

Your days are filled to the brim of exciting new people, like Rose and Dave and Terezi, and Jake spends most of his time hanging out with Gcatavrosprite in the secluded forests of your kingdom. 

It's okay.

Your friendship isn't quite there yet and you aren't fully sure if all the hurts from the past will ever truly be healed, but you are learning to forgive each other for the atrocities that you both let happen to your relationship with each other and your friendships with the girls. 

Suffice to say, it's safe to note that you are  _not_ ready to enter another romantic relationship with another person possibly for the next century or so; your trials with all things love are enough to put you off anything to do with it; irregardless of your own aspect.

Jane and Roxy are individual topics on their own. You and Jane had bonded over your terrible love life choices and brooded much over the unfairness of the life and the universe in general; in fact you spent many sleepovers at her Crocker tower simply gagging on wine and gossip about anything and everything while she did your hair and you painted her toenails. Your friendship with her simply blossomed after the game ended, and you even bake together. (even though everything you touch turns burnt and distasteful, Jane doesn't mind at all.) 

Roxy is a bittersweet candy for you. You are not sure of how to approach her anymore; she has matured into such a beautiful woman and fought her own battles with her battered identity and actual battles with foe in the battlefield. You've heard the stories about she'd been sucker-punched by the Heiress and gotten straight back up, fighting her twice as hard as before. And you. Are so. So. Proud of her. More than you'll ever be able to say or convey with your actions. You're learning. 

Thus leading to the awkwardness in your relationship. Every time you open up your mouth; you are afraid of saying the wrong thing to her, she has reached the stage of perfect harmony, a stage of inner-serenity more than you could ever provide for her with your calculated words and pre-judged movement, she has ascended to somewhere that you cannot quite yet grasp with your little fists, and you are so so afraid of losing her. You want to hug her sometimes, reach out and crush her lithe body to your chest and just cry out, for the years before, for the lost innocence, for the unrequited feelings that you shared, for every drunk demeanor that she felt that she had to hide behind, that you were too blinded to see the meaning behind, but you haven't learned to cry yet, emotions are still a thing of mystery to you: someone who has only recently learned the meaning of how to smile.

Sometimes, in those awkward pauses where you are both at a loss for words, she stares at you, it feels like she's looking deep into the realms of your souls, she looks into the crevices of your orange eyes (you don't wear your shades anymore) and you wonder what she sees; you wonder if she is proud of you as you are of her.

Everyday you are learning how to be a better person for yourself. You are not quite there yet and maybe you never will be but you are trying your hardest. You smile more, you speak more, you learn how to interact with other people outside of your comfort zone where you are so vulnerable and naked in front of the eyes of other people, you cannot help but be insecure about your lack social awareness but you try; heck you've even joined the book club that Terezi has pestered you to join for at least a year. 

You're currently all reading Jane's autobiography that had come out the previous year; 'Jane Crocker: The Life of an Heiress', and it is much the rage as you think it to be. 

Honestly, you are happier than you've ever been before. You've learned so much more out of that little apartment in the watery depths of hell, stuck in the same four walls surrounded by the antiquities of a beloved ancestor that you will never meet in your lifetime. But you do see the Dave who cares for you so much in this lifetime. Maybe you were a shitty asshole to him in his timeline but that doesn't mean that that's who you are right now and that's absolutely  _not_ who you will be, either. You won't let yourself to decline to that stage.

But as it with everything, you have your days where you hide.

There are days where you feel as though the game has not yet finished; you feel as though you're stuck in a continuous vicious cycle of death and rebirth, and you're the death that keeps on happening. You feel as if you have not yet made the cut as the others have. Excuse the pun. And those are the days that you call the 'Bad Days'. The 'Bad Days' leave you feeling sick and out of place, as if you don't really belong to the space that you live in, it makes you unable to leave your bed for hours on end, hunger yowling at your stomach, unable to return messages from Roxy or Jake.

You make yourself physically ill and even throw-up on an empty stomach on the sheets of your shared living space with your brother. The self-disgust burns alive and fuels with anger at all your shitty decisions and the choices that you didn't pick for a better outcome. You can barely move, paralyzed by fear and self-hatred. It's a gross sight.

Those days are the days Dave, your sweet bro, has learned how to take care of you; sometimes without even saying a single word. 

He picks up your broken pieces and places them by you for you to fix yourself; he knows that he cannot force you to fix what you cannot face and so he simply waits for you, every step of the way. He knows that just by being there; he helps you in so many ways.

He does this by placing plates of food by you that he knows that you will inevitably eat, he opens the curtains and lets the fresh air in, he sits by you and lets you curl up on his chest, you are so so starved for touch that sometimes you wrap around him and suffocate him with your bro-cuddles like the octopus that you are. Dave hugs you just as hard, and you sometimes wonder if you are finding comfort in each other that your respective guardians cold not provide for you. You try not to think about that too hard.

He knows when you cannot speak and so in turn fills the room with sounds of his own; enraptured conversations of his daily challenges in Can town and love-strifes with Karkat. You listen, looking up at his burning ruby eyes and place your ear on his heart to hear the 'ba-thump' of it every other second. What you cannot say, he says it for you.

You are not quite sure what you did to ever have someone like him in your life but you are thankful for him all the same.

Karkat calls the two of you 'pale', the millionth time that he sees you sharing bro-cuddles and doing gay platonic shit like staring into each others eyes, and you are not sure what that means. 

You ask him about it and he sits you down with a pitying expression which amuses you. He gets out his encyclopedia of romantic attraction between trolls and you can't help but scrunch your nose at the word of 'romantic'. He rolls his eyes at you and tells you to shut the fuck up and listen to him.

"Dirk fucking Strider, prepare to get your puny human bulge flamed with the knowledge that I - Karkat Vantas - am about to bestow upon your cold cold lizard-sized brain." 

Karkat is cool and you grin at him.

"Mother fucker, Strider did he just smile at me with his teeth." He turns to Dave who also shrugs his shoulders and shares a look of fond amusement with you.

You spend the rest of the afternoon in a cuddle cocoon with your 'moirail' (you don't know how to quite pronounce that yet) and your moirail's 'matespirit'; Karkat spends most of the time explaining to the both of you what Troll romance was all about. He looks at your confused expression at times and remarks that Leprechaun romance is - might he say - even more complex and riddle-worthy than Troll or human romance can hope to be.

He explains how 'moirails' were the backbones of those they shared that type of particular relationship with, they helped the other person become better and you look at Dave and feel the inconceivable truth behind every word that Karkat says. It's not red romance, what you feel for Dave, because that would be too complicated and gross for you to think about (if you still had your shades, Hal would delve on to a comedic speech about that fucked-up Oedipus/Electra complex that you have going on), instead it's something stabilising for not just you but him too. 

Dave, you've noticed is a natural caregiver, a symptom of someone whose hyper-sensitive to the emotions of those around him, but who tries to hide it with a 'cooler' mask. Both you and Rose have him figured out. He lets out his protective instincts through his everyday actions, by speaking to John every evening or motherhenning you every chance he's got, even subtly asking about everyone's day so as to make sure no one feels left out. It's just who he is.

And as long as he keeps it healthy and safe for his own sanity, you do not see a problem with it; in fact you even encourage it too. Dave tends to get fidgety and nervous when he doesn't have someone to care for, reacting by going on long spiels of conversations about stuff that doesn't matter and you end up wasting hours simply talking about random bullshit. 

He is good for you. And you try your best to be good for him too.

The years have shaped you into a less-fucked up persona of who you once were, and you still scream bloody nightmares every fortnight but with your best bro and his matespirit cuddling you to safety, you feel as though you are ready to handle the world and all of its shapeless gore.

You are happy.


End file.
